Out on a limb

A People's Liberation Army artist finds himself in a book of Chinese art thanks to his inspiration - desert poplars, Jiang Yijing reports.

When artist Ji Youquan, who works for the People's Liberation Army, first went to Luntai in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region as a tourist in 1998, he says he did not think he would visit the county every year for the next two decades, least of all to make paintings of desert poplars, a member of the willow family.

"It was afternoon and I was on the way to Luntai with friends, when I saw the kind of tree that I had never seen before. My curiosity drove me to get out of the car and take a closer look," Ji, who was born in 1953, says, adding that they later found a Populus euphratica forest.